finished my dress up darling the other day and surprisingly i didn't hate it. the fanservice was unnecessary and i have no idea why the author, as a woman, includes it but it was toned down from unnecessary panty shots and instead we see plenty of marin's body when she changes into cosplay or buys clothes. overall it wasn't as terrible as, say, whatever the fuck is wrong with shokugeki no soma.
what i liked:
>depiction of fandom culture/cosplay culturepersonally i was never into cosplay and i have some gripes with the community as a whole but i really like the depiction of fandom culture in mangas. i also enjoyed this in kiss him, not me. my aforementioned gripes with the cosplay community are mostly because i knew too many cosplayers who were insanely attention starved and extremely catty. so i liked how nice all the cosplayers were to each other and hyped each other up. all of them really enjoyed cosplaying as a way to show their love for a character which isn't something that seems to be #1 priority for a lot of the cosplayers i knew back in the day (they were more concerned about popularity and trying to monopolize characters/cause drama by accusing others of stealing their idea to cosplay the current flavor of the month best girl/boy)
>humornot much to say here, humor is subjective, but the manga made me breathe out through my nose a few times because it's so silly and some parodies/jabs are delightfully on the nose
>official translationi like that manga/anime seem to move away from trying to translate everything with tons of translator's notes to stay true to the sacred nihongese scrolls and instead try to catch the tone of the characters and localize it for an overseas audience. ngl as a 30+ year old seeing "bitidubs" (btw) said by a character made me cringe a bit but overall it felt very immersive and natural.
>art stylefukuda has a nice art style and i wish she'd use it for less scrotey shit tbh. she draws really cute girls and seems to have a lot of ideas which i'm guessing she also incorporated into the fictional series that marin cosplays from.
>fictional seriesspeaking of which, a lot of them are parodies/references to other series or popular concepts and i think i would have enjoyed the nun horror visual novel and the nge/gantz/angel sanctua
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